3:00 a.m. One of my favorite hours. If it were not for a small fan stirring up air in my workroom, it would be absolutely quiet...no wind at the window, no sound from Brad's computer, not even the sound of a dog on the floor softly breathing. They are both up in bed with Brad, taking up the space I've relinquished. A good night...for several reasons. Larry, one of the "three stooges" barn cats we adopted and promptly made into house pets, went missing a few days ago. Rural Ontario can be a dangerous place for domesticated animals, especially on our farm that abuts about 150 acres of wild forest. It makes a walk about the fields interesting, what with the spilling-over of wild turkey, wild pheasant, deer, foxes, racoons...you name it. But 5-lb cats, which is as tiny as Larry is, can easily get chewed up by the "system." She is Brad's cat so I was doubly pleased when she howled at the door, accusingly, about 20 minutes ago, then ran directly to the catfeeder behind Brad's desk. I thought about waking him...but it has been so hot for the past few days and he is sleeping deeply at last. Time enough for good news over coffee.

Another reason to embrace this night...several hours ago, at page 109 of the new Harry Potter book, I gave up on consciousness and crashed into a deep sleep myself. Brad almost snatched the book out of my sleep-twitching hands because he had stopped at page 90 a few hours before. I am sure Potter is lying on the sofa in the livingroom, where Brad likes to read, waiting for me to join in his adventures against evil. I don't know how the two of us are going to make it out of the current scrape that confronts us...but, as I turn every page, I must simply trust that all will turn out well. Whatever occurs, however, I *must* get to the end of the book before Brad does...it is a moral imperative.